AAPHP News, Volume 2 Issue 11

News Items

1. Save the dates - Oct 20,2001 AAPHP Business Meeting Oct. 21, 2001 CME Educational Session 1 to 5 PM - Two topics - Mental Health and the Public Health Workforce Development
2. Your help needed to recruit new members - See why below
3. Vacancy - Research Medical Officer or Health Scientist Administrator National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute National Institutes of Health  (submitted by Marcel Salive)
4. Postgraduate Fellowship Opportunity in West Virginia (submitted by Joel Nitzkin)
5. New IOM report on one of the most important issues in Public Health. Can we change behavior? http://books.nap.edu/books/0309070309/html/1.html#pagetop  (submitted by Kim Buttery)
6. Report from Philip Gioia on the AMIA spring public health informatics conference
7. New cholesterol guidelines - http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/cholesterol/index.htm 

AAPHP News is sent to members whenever we receive several items of potential interest. Send information for this newsletter to the editor at vmdato@pitt.edu . Please forward this newsletter to physicians who may be
interested in joining. A membership application form can be found on our
web page http://www.aaphp.org .

Item 1. Plan to attend our conference held in conjunction with APHA in Atlanta, Georgia. Our business meeting will take place Oct. 21, 2001 and our Educational Session on Oct. 22, 2001 will focus on Public Health Workforce Development and Mental Health. More details to follow

Item 2. AAPHP is starting two new initiatives. The Board of AAPHP has recently voted to fund a job market website, and to support CCRC's (Coalition for Community Responsive Care) in reactivating their preventive medicine residency. In order to do these types of activities we need to grow in number (to increase our budget) and we also need to develop a more extensive committee structure (to increase our energy). Please encourage your colleagues to join AAPHP either through the website http://www.aaphp.org  or through a membership brochure is available at http://www.aaphp.org/Membership/newmemb.PDF . Members with creativity and enthusiasm are invited to take a more active role in recruitment by contacting Vice President Ginny Dato ( vmdato@pitt.edu  - note I will be out of the country June 25 through July 6 and will not responding to email during that time.)

Item 3. Vacancy Announcement Research Medical Officer or Health Scientist Administrator National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute National Institutes of Health

The Clinical Applications and Prevention Program (CAPP), Division of Epidemiology and Clinical Applications (DECA) of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), NIH is seeking a physician or other doctoral-level scientist to serve as a Research Medical Officer or Health Scientist Administrator in an exciting, dynamic, and cutting edge environment.

DECA is an extramural division of the NHLBI that funds epidemiologic, prevention, and clinical research studies related to cardiovascular diseases. The position is in the Prevention Scientific Research Group, whose research portfolio addresses primordial, primary, or secondary prevention of cardiovascular diseases examined in efficacy, effectiveness, or translational studies. Topics include health behaviors such as diet, physical activity, and smoking; CVD risk factors such as hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes (including drug treatment); and early detection and treatment of acute cardiac events.

Responsibilities are to manage a portfolio of investigator?initiated studies, advise potential grant applicants, work as a collaborative scientist on multicenter studies, develop initiatives for Institute?initiated research based on recommendations from the scientific community and knowledge of scientific literature, and develop and hold workshops and advisory meetings on relevant topic areas. This position may be filled at the GS?13, 14, or 15 level (equivalent to an Assistant, Associate or Full Professor). Expertise in epidemiology, clinical intervention, or behavioral intervention related to cardiovascular disease prevention in human populations is required; expertise and experience in randomized trials is preferred.

See Vacancy Announcement HL-01-0030 at or at http://reports.cit.nih.gov/jobsnih/advacsearch.asp  or contact Jill Beklik or Susan McPherson at (301) 496-6477. Closing date for applications is June 29, 2001. NIH is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Item 4 Preventive Medicine Fellowship The West Virginia Medical Institute (WVMI), a federally qualified Peer Review Organization, is offering a one to two year fellowship in general preventive medicine at its Charleston, WV headquarters. The successful candidate will have experience concentrated in clinical quality improvement, preventive program implementation and health system assessment. Such experience would be valuable in finding opportunities for long term career advancement applying preventive medicine principles to managed care, quality improvement, or health services research and development.

WVMI is one of the oldest quality improvement organizations in the United States, and has performance measurement and quality improvement contracts with the Health Care Financing Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense, as well as utilization management contracts with two state governments and consulting relationships with other entities. We provide a broad range of services for our clients, including health data collection, management, and reporting; health system assessment and interventions to improve quality and cost effectiveness; and consultation on prevention and disease management.

WVMI has six board certified physicians on staff with expertise in utilization management, health care organization and managed care, health quality improvement, preventive medicine, and epidemiolgy. The Director of Scientific Support, who will serve at the fellow's primary mentor, is board certified in general preventive medicine and public health.

This is a limited duration training position intended to provide the fellow with practical experience in preventive medicine areas relevant to WVMI's corporate mission and objectives.

Under the direction of the Director of Scientific Support (a board certified preventive medicine specialist), the fellow carries out preventive research and intervention projects within WVMI's existing portfolio of contracts. Such projects are expected to add value to the work WVMI performs for its clients while offering the opportunity for directed post-residency experience and professional publication. The fellow will have numerous opportunities for supervised professional growth as well as acquisition of skills useful in a career in health quality improvement. Typical project areas might include:

Developing and implementing a program of academic detailing to improve physician performance in utilization of preventive services, using provider profiles and other epidemiological methods to identify target practices;

Working with expert panels to develop evidence-based practice guidelines for WVMI clients; providing expert advice for measures to evaluate effective implementation of guidelines;

Performing and interpreting analyses of aggregated medical data from record abstraction and administrative sources to determine significance and trends and hypothesized causes of geographic distribution of diseases and patterns of care in large health care systems;

Researching and providing recommendations for quality improvement initiatives, including, but not limited to, physician performance and education, physician practice guidelines, patient education to promote healthy lifestyles, and other activities consistent with evidence-based medical practice and preventive medicine principles;

Assisting a state health agency in the design and implementation of chronic disease surveillance and intervention programs;

Validating administrative measures of quality of care of nursing home residents through structured on-site audits, and identifying ways of improving the reliability of claims-based data on nursing home care.

The salary range for this position is $35-40,000 per annum, including comprehensive health and dental benefits. The fellow will not be expected  to engage in clinical practice as part of his/her duties; malpractice insurance is not required.

For further information, contact

Charles P. Schade, MD, FACPM (304) 346-9864 x 4243
cschade@wvmi.org 

For an application, please contact Laura Nauman
Director, Human Resources WVMI
3001 Chesterfield Place
Charleston WV 25304
(304) 346-9864 x 2252
lnauman@wvmi.org 

Item 6 Report from Dr. Gioia Date: 5/27/01 6:10:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: gioia@relex.com (Phillip C Gioia MD MPH) 
I got back from the American Medical Informatics Asssociation (AMIA) Spring Meeting "Developing a National Agenda for Public Health Informatics" May 17, 2001. AMIA would like to form a task force to work towards forming a
national health information infrastructure (NHII) useful clinically, academically, preventatively, and finanacially. The task force would be formed with the CDC, NCVHS (National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics) chaired by John Lumpkin,MD,MPH, NACCHO (National Association of County and City Health Officiers), ASTHO, ASPH, APHL, NAPHSIS, CSTE, NLM, HRSA and RWJF as listed at http://www.amia.org/meetings/spring/f2.html and others. Also at that web site are reports of related information and details of the meeting. AMIA through the breakout groups (finace, architecture, standards/vocabulary, training, research/evaluation, privacy/confidentiality) will be coming up with a report outlining the key features of a NHII as we of the meeting see it.